Brayden Child Summary: 8 Years Old!

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8 year old life and daily schedule. Learn about this child’s daily schedule and how to handle things that come up with eight year olds. Learn about tips for bedtimes with tweens, getting kids to talk, and 8 year old chores.

8 year old Brayden

Brayden is now 8 years old! That means we enter a whole new BW book: On Becoming Pre-Teen Wise. Can you believe it?!? I guess that means his next summary will be in a new category–Pre-teen Summary! Ack!

>>>Read: Truths About Parenting Tweens You Should Know

EATING

Brayden seems to be going through a growth spurt right now. He is eating a lot more at meals.

SLEEPING

Sleeping has been great. We now let him read for about 10 minutes in his bed before he goes to sleep. We make sure he is in bed early enough that he can add ten minutes.

We started this at the time change because he was having a hard time going to bed an hour early. It is something Jim Trelease talks about in his book The Read Aloud Handbook that I have wanted to implement someday.

Brayden is old enough and responsible enough to handle it. He is good about watching his clock and reading for the amount of time we tell him and then go to bed.

>>>Read: Sleep Needs and Difficulties for 7-12 Year Olds

EXTRA ACTIVITIES

Brayden continues to take swimming lessons. During this last three month span, he also did piano lessons, soccer, and started baseball.

Brayden at his piano recital

TALKING

Last time, I talked about how it is hard to get Brayden to talk. You may have seen my post last Friday about a book I read, Raising Cain, to help get ideas.

We have had good improvements in the talking department. Something right now that is helpful is we play catch every day when he gets home from school. It has worked out well and it is good to have that carved out and planned one-on-one time with him.

I think that is the trick for him is one-on-one time, which obviously is harder to come by with four kids and him in school all day. I am learning as I go with him–the perks of being the oldest child right? I will make sure I always have a planned one-on-one activity with him each day.

EMBARRASSMENT

I have a friend who is a mom to one of Brayden’s best friends. She was telling me the other day how when this boy gets embarrassed, he gets angry and she had realized this relatively recently.

I have since noticed what Brayden does when he is uncomfortable or embarrassed he makes light of the situation. He doesn’t do this in a witty, make everyone laugh way. He does it more in a “I am too smart and too good for this” way. It is the way he deals with his emotion. This is something we will be working with him on. 

An interesting thing in the Raising Cain book is the authors talk about how boys tend to have a narrower vocabulary for emotions.

Boys and girls of the same age do not identify the same amount of emotions. While girls can name a range of complex emotions, boys simplify and group emotions into a few main categories.

So helping boys identify these emotions is important to helping him express them appropriately. 

An example of this happening was at baseball practice. Brayden feels like if he is corrected, he is somehow bad at it (a perfectionist thing).

So at practice one day, there were lots of older boys there helping the younger ones learn how to play the different positions. He started getting really silly and reacting to an instruction of “move to the left a little bit” by either moving an inch or ten feet. 

SCHOOL

It is the end of second grade! He has loved school and continues to do well. It is a little scary to move into older grades. Second grade is still pretty much sunshine and roses and everyone is friends. From my memory and current observations, that starts to change in fourth grade. 

GROWING UP

I was thinking about things to have Brayden take over this summer (I like to do new chore training during summer since there is no school going on). I decided to have him put all of his own laundry away (probably long overdue…but I like to be aware of how many shirts there are in what colors…anyway, I told him about this plan and he said, “I would LOVE that.” Um, okay? I told him we will both be happy then 🙂 

>>>Read: Age-Appropriate 8 Year Old Chores

BOOKS

Here are some books he loves:

8 YEAR OLD SCHEDULE

Brayden weekday schedule is:
7 AM–get up. Eat breakfast. Get ready for school. Practice piano. Play until time to go to school.
Goes to school.
Comes home from school.
Play catch then do Homework.
Playtime until dinner.
5:30 PM–Dinner. Then time with family.
7:00 Chores and start getting ready for bed.
8-8:30–in bed (why does it take so long? We spend a lot of time reading before bedtime. We read scriptures then read chapter books).

>>>Read: Weekend Routines for Older Kids

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